{"id":477,"date":"2009-07-16T07:58:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-16T12:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/planesafe.org\/?page_id=477"},"modified":"2009-07-16T08:41:10","modified_gmt":"2009-07-16T13:41:10","slug":"737s-united-585-march-3-1991-colorado-springs-co","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/planesafe.org\/?page_id=477","title":{"rendered":"737s: United 585, March 3, 1991, Colorado Springs CO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On June 5, 2001, the NTSB released a Revised Final Report for United 585, the Boeing 737, which crashed on March 3, 1991, at Colorado Springs, CO.  This is a story about a 737 rudder failure, and ultimately re-designed parts, told through UA585 and to remember the 25 souls on board.  The original NTSB investigation blamed the \u201cwind\u201d and listed UA585 as one of only three \u201cunsolved\u201d aviation disasters.  The truth was always there \u2013 but it took ten years to finally receive a <em>revised<\/em> Final Report from the NTSB.  <\/p>\n<p>In March 1991 all I wanted was the truth about the cause of the crash, and a redesigned aircraft, if necessary, to be sure that others did not die because of this fatal flaw.  I did not imagine that it would take so many years to have the truth to be public record.  I believe that because of the public pressure from a number of people, and deaths of our loved ones, that the truth finally prevailed.  <\/p>\n<p>March 23\u201124, 1999, the NTSB formally revised the Probable Cause for UA585 to be:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;A loss of control of the airplane resulting from the movement of the rudder surface to its blowdown limit. The rudder surface most likely deflected in a direction opposite to that commanded by the pilots as a result of a jam of the main rudder power control unit servo valve secondary slide to the servo valve housing offset from its neutral position and overtravel of the primary slide.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>United 585 was possibly the first major commercial airline crash with no Public Hearing back in 1992. A meeting was held which tended to blame the wind for the crash.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>We thank the NTSB for their diligence and for the extensive revisions to the Revised Final Report.  <\/p>\n<p>Gail Dunham<\/p>\n<h2>United 585 Timeline and Documents<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>United 585 \u2013 <a href=\"http:\/\/planesafe.org\/planesafe_archive\/pdfs\/SAFETYUnited585Postscript.pdf\" target=\"new\">Postscript (PDF)<\/a><\/li>\n<li>May 9, 1991 \u2013 <a href=\"http:\/\/planesafe.org\/planesafe_archive\/pdfs\/safety737cockpitvoicerecorder.pdf\" target=\"new\">Cockpit Voice Recorder Investigation members list.<\/a><\/li>\n<li>August 13, 1991 \u2013 <a href=\"http:\/\/planesafe.org\/planesafe_archive\/pdfs\/LtrfromIAM81391.pdf\" target=\"new\">Letter from International Association of Machinists &#038; Aerospace Workers (PDF)<\/a> explains the jammed slides in the servo-valve, mentions several write-ups on \tthe yaw damper prior to the crash, and another recent hard over rudder in Chicago \t(Mack\u00a0Moore incident).  <a href=\"http:\/\/planesafe.org\/planesafe_archive\/pdfs\/LtrfromIAM81391.pdf\" target=\"new\">Click here to view document and Parts Catalog Illustrations<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>August 4, 1992 \u2013 <a href=\"http:\/\/planesafe.org\/planesafe_archive\/pdfs\/SAFETYUnited585Aug492LtrReprimand.pdf\" target=\"new\">Letter of Reprimand to United Airlines (PDF)<\/a> regarding the \u201cMack Moore\u201d incident, although the UAL mechanics were probably doing the best investigation at that time. <\/li>\n<li>October 8, 1992 \u2013 <a href=\"http:\/\/planesafe.org\/planesafe_archive\/pdfs\/boeingmeetingwehaveaproblem.pdf\" target=\"new\">Minutes from the Boeing \u201cWe have a problem\u201d meeting.<\/a>  Boeing met to\u201cDevelop 737 Rudder PCU Retrofit Strategy.\u201d The meeting began with: \u201cWe have a problem.\u201d  They stated that they did not have to ground the fleet, but the needed a retrofit program to fix the 737.  It took about 8 years to get this document.<\/li>\n<li>November 10, 1992 &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/planesafe.org\/planesafe_archive\/pdfs\/SAFETYUnited585Nov1092LtrCarlVogt.pdf\" target=\"new\">Letter from Carl W. Vogt, former NTSB Chair<\/a>,  acknowledges the potential for a rudder reversal on all 737&#8217;s, thus reporting the true cause of the fatal crash of UA585.  This letter and information was withheld for years and finally secured via my three year Freedom of Information request.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/planesafe.org\/planesafe_archive\/pdfs\/SAFETYUnited585Nov1092LtrCarlVogt.pdf\" target=\"new\">View the letter with editorial comment and background information<\/a> or<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/planesafe.org\/planesafe_archive\/pdfs\/VogtLtr111092.pdf\" target=\"new\">view the original letter<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>December 8, 1992 \u2013 NTSB cancelled the UA585 Public Hearing and held a \u201cmeeting\u201d \tabout UA585, with no testimony under oath, and NTSB wrongly blamed the \u201cwind\u201d for the \tcause of the cause.<\/li>\n<li>March, 1996 to January 1997 \u2013 NTSB Chair Jim Hall appointed an \u201cExpert Panel\u201d for an independent investigation of the 737 rudder failure, which recommended a redesign of the servo value.  This is the only Independent Expert Panel that we know of working on a commercial crash for the NTSB, and it worked very well.<\/li>\n<li>March 1999 \u2013 <a href=\"http:\/\/planesafe.org\/planesafe_archive\/pdfs\/SAFETYUnited585HistoryMar99.pdf\" target=\"new\">UA 585 History (PDF)<\/a><\/li>\n<li>March 23\u201124 1999 \u2013 <a href=\"http:\/\/planesafe.org\/planesafe_archive\/pdfs\/SAFETYUnited585March1999.pdf\" target=\"new\">&#8220;USAir 427 and UA585 . . . and the \taftermath.&#8221; (PDF)<\/a> NTSB\u00a0announced\u00a0a\u00a0probable cause for US427 and UA585 \u201c737 rudder reversal failures.\u201d Click here<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On June 5, 2001, the NTSB released a Revised Final Report for United 585, the Boeing 737, which crashed on March 3, 1991, at Colorado Springs, CO. This is a story about a 737 rudder failure, and ultimately re-designed parts, told through UA585 and to remember the 25 souls on board. The original NTSB investigation [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"parent":20,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"index.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-477","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>737s: United 585, March 3, 1991, Colorado Springs CO - Planesafe.org<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/planesafe.org\/?page_id=477\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"737s: United 585, March 3, 1991, Colorado Springs CO - Planesafe.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On June 5, 2001, the NTSB released a Revised Final Report for United 585, the Boeing 737, which crashed on March 3, 1991, at Colorado Springs, CO. 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This is a story about a 737 rudder failure, and ultimately re-designed parts, told through UA585 and to remember the 25 souls on board. The original NTSB investigation [&hellip;]","og_url":"https:\/\/planesafe.org\/?page_id=477","og_site_name":"Planesafe.org","article_modified_time":"2009-07-16T13:41:10+00:00","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/planesafe.org\/?page_id=477","url":"https:\/\/planesafe.org\/?page_id=477","name":"737s: United 585, March 3, 1991, Colorado Springs CO - Planesafe.org","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/planesafe.org\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-07-16T12:58:00+00:00","dateModified":"2009-07-16T13:41:10+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/planesafe.org\/?page_id=477#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/planesafe.org\/?page_id=477"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/planesafe.org\/?page_id=477#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/planesafe.org\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Safety","item":"https:\/\/planesafe.org\/?page_id=20"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"737s: United 585, March 3, 1991, Colorado Springs CO"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/planesafe.org\/#website","url":"https:\/\/planesafe.org\/","name":"Planesafe.org","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/planesafe.org\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesafe.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesafe.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesafe.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesafe.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesafe.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=477"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/planesafe.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16713,"href":"https:\/\/planesafe.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/477\/revisions\/16713"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesafe.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/20"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesafe.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}